Carnegie Mellon University has published research that describes grouping of logic into macro-regular “bricks” to allow the use of pushed design rules within the bricks. U.S. Pat. No. 7,278,118 entitled “Method and Process For Design of Integrated Circuits Using Regular Geometry Patterns to Obtain Geometrically Consistent Component Features” describes other aspects of such bricks.
While the invention in the '118 patent and other pending applications of the current assignee set forth advantageous aspects relating to the creation of such logic bricks, refinements and advances continue, and some of those are described herein.